Natural fruit juices contain pectin or similar cellulosic materials which are suspended in the juice. This suspension is known as "cloud". A cloudy appearance is important to juice-flavored beverages, particularly citrus juices, because it provides the apperance of natural fruit juice to the consumer. The appearance of cloud is created by the interaction and diffusion of light by suspended fine particles of an emulsion. The inclusion of a clouding agent in the emulsion enhances the opacity.
The clouding agent is usually a colloidal material and is often combined with flavorings. It is typically added to the beverage in the form of an aqueous emulsion. A water-soluble emulsifier, such as a gum or modified food starch, is added to create an emulsion between the clouding agent and flavoring oils. During the emulsification process, the water-insoluble clouding agent is formed into small particles. The emulsifier coats the particularized clouding agent and prevents coalescence of the clouding agent, maintaining the emulsion.
With time, the clouding agent emulsion can separate from the beverage and form an oil ring at the top of the container, or sediment at the bottom of the container. The conventional solution to this problem is to mix the clouding agent with a weighting agent, traditionally a brominated vegetable oil, to provide stability.
The weighting agent has a high specific gravity and is mixed with flavor oils and clouding agents to increase the specific gravity of the resulting mixture to be approximately equal to that of the beverage. The weighting oil thereby prevents migration of the beverage opacifier to the surface of the beverage.
Examples of traditional clouding agents include citrus oils which are largely composed of terpenes and smaller amounts of sesquiterpenes, and citrus peel oils which are contained in oval, balloon-shaped oil sacs located in the outer rind of the fruit adjacent to the chromoplasts. Citrus peel oils are composed of mixtures of terpenes, aldehydes, esters, acids, alcohols, ketones, esters and phenols. The terpenes contained in citrus oils and citrus peel oils will impart a cloudy effect on the beverage.
Unfortunately, many commercial opacifiers can impart a discernible off-taste to the final beverage. For example, those opacifiers prepared from such clouding agents as citrus terpenes, possess an inherent citrus taste and can develop an acid catalyzed oxidized off-flavor in the beverage. A clouding agent which is not subject to oxidative degradation and corresponding off-flavor is needed.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a beverage opacifier which achieves the desirable appearance of the presence of citrus juice in the beverage without imparting any off-flavor or unacceptable odor to the beverage.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an effective beverage opacifier with an extended shelf life because it is not subject to oxidative degradation and resultant off-flavors.
It is a further object of this invention to provide beverage concentrates, beverage syrups, carbonated beverages and noncarbonated beverages containing a beverage opacifier which does not impart any off-flavor and which is not subject to oxidative degradation.